Running a Shmup Tournament

[FatalError]

I have run many videogame tournaments in the past for a local anime convention. The person who runs the video game room (whom I am good fiends with) basically let me know that I could run basically any tournament I wanted to at anytime. So, I am thinking about running a shmup tournament.

I have all the equipment (consoles, connections, controllers, memory cards) and a monitor I can TATE, so hardware is not an issue. I also own a metric buttload of shmups for the NES, SNES, Genesis, Saturn, PS, PS2, Dreamcast, Turbo Duo, and Gamecube, so software isn't really an issue either.

There are problems I came across with the logistics of a shmup tournament.

First: Inexperience with the genre. The people entering the tournament will probably not be the most adept at shooters (imagine a typical gamer off the street), so I don't expect to see a lot of shmup experts coming in.

Second: The type of shmup tournament. There are not too many ways you can run a shmup tournament. Basically it's going to boil down to a high score contest OR a contest to see who can get the farthest, which brings us into…

Third: Time of tournament. I need to consider how long a tournament like this could run. I will assume that I have around two hours to run a tournament.

Fourth: Recording high scores. If you play most shmups, when you die and don't make the high score list, your score is not recorded. If I am dealing with people who don't play a lot of shmups, it will be hard to record their scores. For example, most PS2 Cave games, once you die with your last ship, it goes straight to "GAME OVER" text on the screen. I would need to bring a VCR to replay the last few seconds so I could record the score.

So I ask the forum how you would run a shmup tournament and what games would you use and why?

[SFKhoa]

If you wanted to combine a shmup with something anime-esque to fit the atmosphere better, you should use any of the Touhou series.

[durias]

I wish I could help. I'd be interested to hear what people say.

[Pirate1019]

If it's a tournament where the participants are predominantly average gamers, then do you really need to get a VCR to record the last seconds of play? Couldn't you simply snap a picture of the score on the screen before the countdown reaches zero? I don't think any of them will object. Some might even think it weird that you insist on getting proof like that at all.

Games: A little of everything. Games of varying difficulty and style. If you could only use a few games then I would make sure that you choose games that are easily accessible and the score systems aren't terribly complex. One example I can think of is Gradius V. My friends, who have short attention spans, spent 3 hours in an impromptu high score competition for Gradius V.

[Asherdude]

I set up a Street Fighter tournament once when I worked as a department head at Walmart. Back then, I set up a row of Super Nintendo's & Sega Genesis and I recorded them with a simple VCR. Then I allowed the person to pick the console and I gave them 5 minutes to achieve their best score. And then that score went on the leader board.

I would do a SHMUP contest the same way. Well, I'd probably use a PS2 instead of a SNES.

Oh... and those Sci-fi/Star Trek conventions would be a great place to hold one.

[DJ Incompetent]

First: Inexperience with the genre. I don't expect to see a lot of shmup experts coming in.
Third: I will assume that I have around two hours to run a tournament.

Use Strikers 1945 (II). Assign Rapid-Fire Shot to Square; Support (Bomb) button to X, Circle, & L1; assign Regular Single-Shot to Triangle, R1, & R2.
Inexperience with the genre means you only really need to teach players to hold Square the whole time and use X when they are about to die. Then say if the player is at a boss and he wants to use the charge meter in the bottom corner, Hold Triangle or R for a second then let-go.

If you have 2 hours time, leaving difficulty on Normal should chew and spit out every player by stage 3. All stages are really short. If you want to make it less punishing, (my US version) lets you drop the difficulty up to 5 levels below Normal. Because the first 4 stages rotate, people won't totally be able to study other's play as the difficulty on a stage ramps up depending on when the stage is played.

If anybody bitches about some stages being easier than others, first tell him no, they all adjust difficulty depending on when stage is played, and then ask the guy when every time he lost a life, was his bomb stock totally empty? He will say no, and then you tell him that was his fault he couldn't extend his play time longer by clearing the screen.

Second: The type of shmup tournament. There are not too many ways you can run a shmup tournament. Basically it's going to boil down to a high score contest OR a contest to see who can get the farthest

Play for score. Since there's no real scoring system in Strikers, score will mostly reflect length of performance.
Make sure every entrant knows before he starts that touching medals as they blink will value higher. Then tell the guys they have a bomb button, what it does, and they should use all bombs before losing every life.

Also, say if the player hits the continue button, his score is disqualified. But if you physically disable the Start button on all tournament controllers, people will be completely unable to continue in Strikers. The player does not need the Start button to begin a game.

Fourth: Recording high scores.

Every player will get a small cutout of stiff poster board or cardboard with his name on it (big letters & probably numbered) that the player will place upright on top of the TV he's playing the game on so his name displays in the same direction the tv faces. You will have a second guy assisting you in running this tourney. We'll call him Camera Guy. His job is just to monitor all players playing at once while holding a decent digital camera with anti-wobble technology. You should have 2-3 digital cameras handy for when batteries run out. When a player's game is up and he sees the continue screen, the player lets that countdown run slow as he calls for the attention of your Camera Guy. Camera Guy sets up his shot(s) and when the continue timer runs out the player's formal score displays for about 8-10 seconds no matter the ranking if at all, which is the time a picture of the score + the cardboard of the guy's name is taken in the same shot(s). The high scores in Strikers hold 10 entries and start out blank, so in the event a high score is reached, that buys more than enough time to take the snapshot(s).



Depending on number of players, you should allow at least two or more full-game attempts per contestant. Not really fair for first time players to get adjusted while losing lives in the beginning.

[RotateMe]

This won't answer your question, but one thing you should keep in mind is adding some theme to your tournament. There's already a annual very big tournament without a set theme. A nice tourney I would like to see would be playing those PS2 ports of arcade shooters (or the pcbs themselves) which are not (yet) available on MAME, because these were banned out of most tourneys because of low availability. But I think in terms of unemulatable games the PS2 ports are those that still most people have here.